The Metallurgist and the Iron Maiden
by dharmamonkey
Summary: Booth schools Bones on hard rock and heavy metal music. A silly, fluffy tale of how Brennan learns to headbang in her own inimitable way.
1. Love Reign O'er Me

**A/N**: _I own no rights to the Bones characters or to the song lyrics quoted herein. All rights reserved to the copyright holders. (Blah blah...) thanks for reading!_

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><p><em>"There I was completely wasting, out of work and down<em>

_all inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town  
>feel as though nobody cares if I live or die<br>so I might as well begin to put some action in my life…"_

—Judas Priest

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><p>Seeley Booth was in Temperance Brennan's kitchen, bobbing his head to the music as stood over the sink, rinsing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher. Parker had just left a little earlier, leaving Booth a stack of syrup-drenched, blueberry-smeared, batter-clogged breakfast dishes and utensils to clean up. This was Parker's first time cooking pancakes on his own—with a little guidance from his dad—and while the process was fun and result unquestionably delicious, the aftermath was quite a mess, which Booth now had to clean up.<p>

Between the loud music and his focus on the task at hand—getting the Sunday morning breakfast dishes done before Bones came home from her errands—he didn't hear the key in the lock signaling that his partner had returned.

Brennan opened the door to encounter Booth pumping his fist to the music with one hand and growling along with the blaring chorus.

_Breaking the law  
><em>_Breaking the law  
><em>_Breaking the law…_

As he reached for another dish, he noticed her staring at him, and he blushed.

"Oh, hi!" he said with a chuckle. Brennan's raised eyebrows and smirk let him know he'd been busted. "Just rocking out a bit while I finish up these dishes," he explained with a sheepish grin, glancing over to his iPod sitting in the stereo dock. "If I left this unused batter to sit any longer, it would turn to concrete."

"That's not possible," she corrected him. "Concrete is an inorganic—" She cut herself off, realizing she'd once again failed to recognize one of his metaphors.

Booth smiled and shook his head, trying to shake the congealed pancake batter from a wire whisk.

"What are you listening to?" she asked him. "This seems like an odd lyric for a law enforcement officer to be singing along with…"

"What are you talking about, Bones?" he asked in mock incredulousness. "This is the Priest!"

She narrowed her eyes in that squinty expression of curiousity that Booth loved so much. "What kind of priest?" she asked.

Booth threw his head back with laughter. "Not _a_ priest, Bones. _The_ Priest. Judas Priest. One of the most influential power metal bands of the early to mid-eighties."

Brennan walked over to him, held her hand out and took the whisk from his hand, loading it into the dishwasher's silverware drawer. "Booth, why would you like a song about breaking the law? That seems a bit incongruous with your profession, you know."

"Aw, come on Bones," he said. "It's not just about the lyrics—it's about the power and the emotion."

She listened to the song, noting its muscular rhythm and thick, highly distorted guitar harmonies. The singer had a soaring tenor that she found quite impressive, even though she was completely unfamiliar with this style of music.

"Actually, sometimes it is about the lyrics," Booth admitted. "But in this case, it's all about raw emotion and…" He paused, unsure of how to explain to her his love of 80s power metal.

"Masculinity?" she offered with a smile. Booth winked.

"Yep, that's it," he agreed. "Definitely. Judas Priest is all about masculinity."

The song on the iPod switched. This one had an interestingly textured, almost medieval sound to its introduction. The vocalist began singing in a low, almost monotomous voice and Brennan looked up at the ceiling, trying to focus on the lyrics.

"This one is kind of cool, Bones. The band is called Týr." He pronounced the band's name like _tier, _and Brennan took her focus from the song to correct him.

"Týr," she said it, using a vowel that sounded like a Germanic grunt. "Týr was the god of single combat in Norse mythology."

Booth smiled. "How'd you know that?" he asked, not actually expecting an answer. Her genius and comprehensive knowledge of world cultures and mythologies never ceased to amaze him. "I think they're from Iceland," he said, referring to the band.

_Og hvør ið enn klettum ræður ei á vindi vá  
>Teir hildu um stýrisvøl tá ódnin legði á<br>"Legg upp í lotið," rópti ein og samdir teir  
>hála á stýrisvøl, men alt til fánýtis<em>

"Faroese," she said. This time, it was Booth that squinted at her.

"What?" he blurted.

"Faroese—that's the language he's singing in. It's a rare language, descended from Old West Norse and spoken only by the sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants of the Faroe Islands."

Booth laughed. "Well, obviously I don't understand the words but their music is really bad ass. Another guy at the Bureau who's real into fringe rock genres turned me onto it."

"I kind of like it," Brennan admitted. Booth flashed his eyebrows in surprise, impressed that she was so open-minded about the music he was playing. He loved that about her—her scientific mind and training as a cultural anthropologist, as well as her years spent travelling all over the world, gave her an incredible openness about new cultural experiences. "It sounds like a contemporary rendition of a traditional Faroese song," she observed. "Is it?"

"I think so," he said, shrugging his shoulders. Honestly, he had no idea. He had never given it much thought before. He just thought the song—the whole _Eric the Red_ album, actually—sounded really bad ass and so different than the usual hard rock stuff he listened to. He returned to his dishes, bobbing his head to the song, _Stýrisvølurin_.

"So what do they call this kind of music?" she asked. Booth smiled down at the skillet as he scrubbed it clean with the brush. He loved how she could oscillate between brilliant mastery of arcane things to complete pop culture cluelessness without missing a beat.

"Heavy metal," he replied. Glancing over to the iPod in its dock, he narrowed his eyes. "Actually, I think Týr would be considered Viking metal or folk metal. The last song we heard—Judas Priest—that would be considered power metal."

The conversation reminded him of the scene in the movie _School of Rock_ in which Jack Black's character drew a huge chart on the blackboard showing the geneology of and interrelationships among various hard rock subgenres. He rinsed off the skillet and placed it in the dish rack to dry, then reached for a gooey plate encrusted with dried maple syrup and smears of blueberry.

"Oooh—" he said, touching her arm with his wet hand and pointing to the iPod. "Check this one out. I think you'll like it," he said with a grin.

_Take my eyes, the things I've seen  
>In this world coming to an end.<br>My reflection fades, I'm weary  
>Of these earthly bones and skin.<em>

_You may pass through me and  
>Leave no trace, I have<br>No mortal face.  
>Solar winds are whispering,<br>You may hear me call._

Booth could tell by the faint smile on her lips that the song's first verse had piqued her interest.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"A British band called Iron Maiden," he replied.

Her head popped back in surprise. "You mean like the medieval device for torture by impalement?"

"Yep," he said with his trademark, open-mouthed Boothy grin. "Listen to the words. These guys have really smart lyrics."

"As smart as me?" she asked.

"No, of course not," he retorted. "But almost. Shhhh—listen…"

The male singer had a rich, dramatic tenor voice that soared over the instrumental complexity below.

_We can shed our skins and swim  
>Into the darkened void beyond.<br>We will dance among the world  
>That orbit stars that aren't our sun.<em>

_All the oxygen that trapped us in  
>A carbon spider's web.<br>Solar winds are whispering, you  
>May hear the sirens of the dead.<em>

_Let the elders to their parley  
>Meant to satisfy our lust.<br>Leaving Damacles still hanging  
>Over all their promised trust…<em>

"Wow," she said. "Those lyrics _are_ smart. Cool, even." She raised her shoulder to emphasis her use of the word "cool," a concept she had never completely understood but was trying to triangulate upon with Booth's help.

As the singer broke into the chorus, Booth sang along in his admittedly inferior, though not unenthusiastic voice.

_Starblind with sun, the  
>Stars are one.<br>We are the light that brings  
>The end of night.<br>Starblind with sun, the  
>Stars are one.<br>We are with the Goddess  
>Of the sun tonight.<em>

"So awesome," Booth said under his breath. "Listen to the next verse," he urged, poking Brennan in the arm with a soapy index finger. "You'll dig it."

"Dig what—" She stopped herself. She was trying hard to be less literal, more metaphoric in her thinking and more colloquial in her speech.

_The preacher loses face  
>With Christ.<br>Religion's cruel device is gone.  
>Empty flesh and hollow bones<br>Make pacts of love but die alone.  
>The crucible of pain will forge the<br>Blanks of sin, begin again.  
>You are free to choose a life to live<br>Or one that's left to lose._

"So awesome," he said again. " Their latest album really, really rocks. I missed those guys on their last tour. They only had two U.S. dates, both of them in Florida, and I was already scheduled to have Parker that weekend, and Rebecca would never have let me take him down there for a concert, so I missed it. It would have been awesome, though."

Brennan had been to a rock concert exactly once, in college, and had frankly hated the experience. The music was too loud, the crowd too boisterous and pushy, and her date too ensconced in the music to pay any attention to her. But perhaps it was worth another try. Maybe Booth would take her to a concert. It would be a fascinating thing to experience, anthropologically speaking. She remembered back to when she was a doctoral student in anthropology and one of her fellow grad students had given a paper at a conference on the comparative ethnogenesis of the outlaw country and gangsta rap musical movements. At the time, she had thought the chosen subject matter incredibly insipid, but now realized it might have been an interesting thing to study.

The next song in Booth's playlist was much softer-sounding than the previous ones. It began with a piano melody, played slowly and simply over a background of falling rain. Then the percussion began and the piano melody began to speed up.

_Only love  
>Can make it rain<br>The way the beach is kissed by the sea_

_Only love  
>Can make it rain<br>Like the sweat of lovers  
>Laying in the fields.<em>

The singer had a voice as clear as pure water.

"This is The Who," Booth noted, his voice quiet so as not to step on Roger Daltrey's voice.

"The who?" she asked, puzzled.

"No—The Who," he clarified, laughing at the Three Stooges-esque exchange. "That's the actual name of the band: The Who. They're a British rock band, who were most active from the mid-sixties until the mid-eighties." He felt like he was reading a Wikipedia entry to her. But she was his Bones, and he was determined to share his love of rock and raise her pop culture IQ a bit in the process.

"Oh," she said. "The Who." She rolled her eyes up to look again to the ceiling as she focused on the lyric.

_Only love  
>Can bring the rain<br>That makes you yearn to the sky  
>Only love<br>Can bring the rain  
>That falls like tears from on high<br>_  
>"I love that," she said.<p>

"I'm so glad," he replied, smiling wide as he loaded the last of the dishes into her dishwasher.

"Thanks for sharing that with me," she said, her voice full of genuine gratitude. He closed the dishwasher door with a click of the latch, and turned to her, his lips pursed in an attempt to hide his smirk.

"I have something else I'd like to share with you," he said in a husky voice.

She laughed as he pulled her towards him.

_Love, reign o'er me…_

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><p><em>To be continued<em>


	2. Tickets

**A/N**: _I own no rights to the Bones characters or to the song lyrics quoted herein. All rights reserved to the copyright holders. (Blah blah...) thanks for reading!_

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><p>"Cheers!"<p>

Brennan clinked her glass of Pellegrino against Booth's pint of beer. They were enjoying a Saturday night dinner in the Georgetown apartment they shared. Brennan put her glass down on the table and looked up at her partner.

"Booth, I have to go to the UK in August," Brennan said, frowning slightly knowing that Booth would not be happy about the idea.

"Why?" he asked her, his voice touched with disappointment.

"There's a conference in Edinburgh, and I've been invited to participate in a panel discussion on..." Booth's bright mood soured quickly at the news. Something about comparative study of technique for some-such something or other. He didn't really care. He didn't want her to go. He didn't want to be separated from her—especially now that she was carrying their unborn child—and he knew these conferences tended to devour a whole week, not counting the travel time to and from.

"Do you have to?" He heard the distinct whining tone in his own voice and suppressed a sheepish grin. The boys at the Hoover had been whispering that he was whipped, and maybe he was. But it didn't change the fact that he didn't want her to go.

"I want you to come with me," she said with a warm smile. Her voice dropped a half-octave. "Look, I know you have plenty of vacation time saved up. Come with me. It'll be fun."

"No murders this time, I hope," he said, recalling the trip they took to London a few years back when they found themselves assisting Scotland Yard in not one, but two homicide investigations, one of them involving Brennan's UK counterpart..

"Come on, Booth," she pleaded. "You loved that trip—despite yourself and that horrible Austin car you hired—and you know we always have fun when we travel together." Booth shrugged his shoulders. "Besides," she said. "I have a little surprise." Her lip twitched in excitement as she walked over to her purse and retrieved an envelope with the Jeffersonian logo. She handed him the envelope and watched expectantly as he turned it over in his hands..

"What is it?" he asked, rhetorically. He opened the envelope, pulled out the piece of paper within, and his whole face lit up with delight, the same way it did that morning at the Royal Diner when he saw the Vet stadium seats being moved to the curb to be picked up by the garbage truck.

"No way!" he exclaimed. "Wow, this is awesome." Suddenly, Special Agent Seeley Booth was transformed into a sixteen year old boy. "Are you serious?" He stared at the print out from the Ticketmaster UK website. Two seats for the second of two Iron Maiden shows at London's O2 Arena, the last show of the Final Frontier World Tour. His cheeks became flush with childlike excitement. "This is so awesome. I can't believe you did this!"

Brennan's face was split wide with a smile, and her eyebrows flashed as she silently congratulated herself for getting the tickets.

"Well," she said, "I know how you said you'd wanted to see them live this spring but the timing didn't work out for the shows in Florida because of Parker's visitation schedule. And so I figured I'd see whether, on the off chance you know, they were playing in Europe the week of my conference. And I'll be damned, they are."

Booth chuckled, not sure if he'd ever heard her use the phrase "I'll be damned" before; however, unlike many of her recently-acquired cliches, this one was used appropriately and came out sounding very natural. _Well done, Bones. _

"You're in for a treat," he told her. "But wait." He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in curiousity. "Have you ever been to a concert? I mean, a _rock_ concert?"

"Once," she laughed. "I hated it, actually. I was in college, and my then-boyfriend took me on a date to a concert for some new age band—"

"New wave," he said, correcting her.

"Right," she said with a slight blush. "It was too loud, thumping bass and pulsing lights, and the crowd was really pushy. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and the floor sticky with beer spilled everywhere. And my date basically ignored me the whole time. It was quite awful, actually."

The smile on Booth's face wilted somewhat. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. "I mean, I won't ignore you, but I can't promise there won't be smoke in the air or spilled beer on the floor. And it _will_ be loud."

"Oh," she exclaimed. "Don't worry—I'm very excited about this. I know you love the music, and it will be fun to see you have fun. It'll be a great opportunity to learn about a whole new subculture—heavy metal fans." Booth couldn't help but chuckle. Only his Bones could turn a hard rock concert into a field experiment in cultural anthropology. "Besides, it's my way of dragging you to London with me—you know, so we don't have to be apart."

He reached his hand across the table and touched her cheek. "You're so good to me. I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

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><p><em>To be continued<em>


	3. Are You Ready to Rock?

**A/N:** Bones _ain't mine, alas. I own no rights to the _Bones _characters or to the song lyrics quoted herein. All rights reserved to the copyright holders. (Blah blah...) Thanks for reading! (In case you're curious why I think Booth might be a serious devotee of heavy metal, I've got two words for you: The Cr__ü__e ;-) You don't actually think Brennan came up with that tasty nugget and implanted into Booth's subconscious?)_

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><p>Brennan stood in front of the mirror adjacent to the door of the hotel room, looking at herself in profile. She was four months pregnant, and her scarcely-perceptable baby bump was now a readily visible roundness to her belly, so all those wonderful pairs of sexy, boot-cut jeans she had in her closet at home were unwearable. She wore a pair of maternity jeans, boot-cut of course, and a three-quarter sleeve black knit top with gray and white embroidery around the plunging neckline. The blouse fit snugly on top but loosely below the breasts. It wasn't exactly what she had originally had in mind, but it would do.<p>

"Babe," Booth said, watching her as he stood in front of the sink wearing only a towel. "Relax—you look absolutely fantastic."

He smiled at her. He couldn't help but smile at her almost all the time these days. He was ecstatic that they were finally together, a couple, seven years after they first met, and all the more happy that she was pregnant with their child. She rolled her eyes at his remark. He couldn't understand why she didn't see what everyone else did, and what he'd seen the second he saw her, more than seven years ago—that she was incredibly beautiful—and the miraculous life growing inside of her gave her a delicious fullness to her breasts, a roundness to her hips and a brilliant glow to her that made her look even more, not less, desirable. She had no idea that, if it weren't for the time, he'd drop his towel and have his way with her right then. She was so fantastically—well, fuckable. _Whoa there, Booth._

"I'm serious," he said, walking over to her and wrapping his strong arms around her waist. "You are more beautiful now than I have ever seen you." He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "And, no, I'm _not_ just saying that."

"Thanks." She smiled and nodded. "I guess it's just—" She struggled to find the right words. "It's just hard to believe how much my body is changing. And how fast it's changing. Sometimes it doesn't feel like my body, you know. It's like living in a complete stranger's body." She shook her head and shrugged. "I'm sure that makes absolutely no sense."

"No—it makes complete sense," he assured her. "Every woman who has ever been pregnant has felt that way. It's totally natural to feel that way." He smiled sweetly and planted soft kisses on her forehead and temple. "But believe me when I say you are more beautiful and sexier now, _today,_ than you've ever been. And I would know, right? I've only been looking at you and appreciating your incredible gorgeous body for, _oh_, the last seven years. I'm kind of an authority on the subject." He winked at her, stroked her hair and released her from his arms, walking back to the vanity area to finish getting ready.

"Okay," she said softly.

Booth knew that it was, in some part, the hormones talking, but also in no small part it was her long-standing insecurity coming through. She possessed an unusual combination of incredible sexual confidence but yet tremendous insecurity about how desireable she really was, and it was something that, while he knew it to be true, he could never completely understand. A lot of it had to do with her childhood—the abandonment by her parents, and the abuse and chaos she suffered in the foster system—and the process of overcoming those feelings had been, and would continue to be, a very gradual one.

He ran a comb through his still slightly damp dark brown hair. "Do you know how proud of you I am?" he asked her, glancing back over to her briefly before reaching for a small bottle of hair gel. "I sat there yesterday, listening to you give your talk, and I was so proud of you. I mean, I was sitting there, and all those people were listening to you with rapt attention, hanging onto your every word, scribbling notes, jockeying to be able to ask you a question, and all I could think was—_wow, isn't she amazing? _So smart, so beautiful, so kind, so generous, so brave, and so strong. And the people sitting there in the audience, who admire and respect you so much—well, they don't know the half of it, how amazing you really are. All I could think was how grateful I was that someone like you wants to be with someone like me."

"Really?" Brennan asked, her voice cracking, a tear running down her cheek.

Booth narrowed his eyes and nodded, glancing over to her. "Totally." He squirted a quarter-sized glob of gel into his hand and rubbed his hands together before spiking his hair up.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He laughed. "What do you think I'm doing?" He ran his fingers through his hair, from scalp to the ends, trying to give it as much loft and height as he could. "That old Booth, he was hard rock. But this? This is heavy metal, baby!"

She laughed, sniffing and wiping the tear from her cheek. "It looks like you're going undercover."

Booth closed one eye, tilted his head and shrugged. "Well, I suppose I am role-playing a little."

"No pony-play, please," Brennan quipped. Booth grimaced and groaned.

"Never in a million fucking years," he retorted. "No freakin' way. That was too damn freaky. _That _has to be one of the weirdest ass cases we've worked, Bones. Sexual fetishes are one thing, but that—_that—_was some batshit crazy stuff." She nodded, having to agree with him there, even though anthropologically, she understood the basis of such practices.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "So in this little role-play, who do I get to play?" she asked.

"Well," he said, pausing to ponder the question. "Well, I'm a guy that rocks. Heavy metal, man, all the way." He raised his hand to offer the reverse "devil horns" gesture that he'd previously taught Brennan was the _shibboleth _of devoted Iron Maiden fans_._ "And you—_you _are my smokin' hot, pregnant girlfriend."

"Hmm," she murmured. "That doesn't sound much like role-playing, Booth. I mean, you are a guy that rocks, and you love heavy metal, and I _am _your smokin' hot, pregnant girlfriend."

"Yeah, well," he said with a laugh. "I guess it's not that big of an experiment in role-playing. Alas." He unfastened his towel and let it fall to the floor, then reached into the suitcase and retrieved a pair of dark, stonewashed jeans and a pair of Philadelphia Flyers boxer shorts. Brennan's eyes followed, staring at his impressively handsome body as he stepped into his boxers and pulled on his jeans. He watched her watching him, and smirked. _I know what you want. Rest assured I want the same thing, too. Later, after the show, yes—you'll get what you want. But for now? _"No, Bones—we can't. We don't have time. Besides, you'll mess up my totally awesome hair."

She laughed again. "So, I'm expecting this to be a tremendous display of alpha maleness. The concert, I mean."

Booth looked at her. "Well, you might be surprised." She turned her head sharply.

"What do you mean?"

With a smirk, he shrugged his shoulders and went back into the suitcase to retrieve a T-shirt. He yanked out a black cotton, motorcycle-themed shirt and began pulling it over his head.

"Booth—"

"What?" He pulled the shirt's hem down over his flat stomach and looked again into the mirror, inspecting his spiked hair.

Brennan looked at him critically. "You're not going to wear _that _shirt, are you?"

"What do you mean, Bones?" he said, his voice betraying his hurt. "This shirt is _very _rock 'n' roll. Motorcycles are the rock 'n' roll of vehicles." _Wait, that came out sounding really, really stupid._

She shook her head and sighed, then walked towards the window. "I don't know. I mean, I don't know much about rock concerts, but—"

"Aw, come on, Bones." He was beginning to get a little pissed. She bought the tickets, and this was supposed to be his night. Why was she micromanaging the T-shirt he was going to wear? As if she was any kind of expert on appropriate dress for heavy metal concerts. _What the fuck, Bones?_

"Booth, don't you think this would be better?" She tossed him a black shirt, which he caught in a swift, one-handed downward motion. He unfurled the folded shirt and his face broke into a wide smile.

"Wow, Bones, this is awesome," he said. He held up the shirt to admire it, then turned it around to show her. It was an Iron Maiden shirt decorated with the cover art of _ A Matter of Life or Death, _the album immediately prior to _The Final Frontier_. The shirt showed a group of skeletons in battle-worn military uniforms, walking in front of what appeared to be an Abrams tank that was emblazoned with a stencil of the band's skull and crossed M-16 rifles logo. He smiled, then noticed the printing on the back of the shirt. It listed all of the countries and tour dates from the _A Matter of Life or Death _tour, and he knew that she'd done more than just jump onto the band's website to buy the shirt. She'd trolled around the internet to find him an authentic concert shirt from the last album tour. His eyes were bright and his smile stretched from ear to ear, and Brennan knew he loved her little gift.

"I hope you like it," she said with a soft smile.

"Like it?" he asked, incredulous. "I love it. This is awesome. Great choice. And it's a real artifact from the last album tour. Great fucking album, by the way."

"I'm really glad you like it," she said. "Are you going to keep saying 'fuck' all night? It's a bit out of character for you, Booth. I mean, once in a while, sure, but—"

"Rock 'n' roll, baby!" he exclaimed. He pulled the Iron Maiden T-shirt over his head. "Saying 'fuck' is very rock 'n' roll. And, tonight—" He grinned. "I'm totally fuckin' rock 'n' roll." He walked away from the mirror and came up behind her, placing his big hands over her rounded belly. "Thanks to you, babe," he said, kissing her on the side of the neck. "Tonight is going to be a blast."

She smiled and, turning her head, kissed him on the cheek. "I think so, too, Booth."

He walked back to the bathroom vanity area, poured himself a glass of tap water, and threw back a couple of pills.

"What's that, Booth?" Brennan asked, slightly concerned. "Are you okay?"

He smiled. "Totally. No, just taking a couple Advil. I'll be on my feet all night, and with my feet, you know, the—" He could never bring himself to use the word "torture" but he didn't need to, because Brennan knew that he had suffered savage beatings of his feet during his service in the Middle East. When he was in the hospital after having been injured by the bomb in her refrigerator, she'd seen the x-rays and the remodeled damage to the bones of his feet. "The only time it really gives me trouble is when I have to stand in one place for hours at a time."

Brennan shook her head. "But I bought us real seats, not general admission."

Booth smiled. Thirty-five years old and this was her first real rock concert. _That's my Bones. _

"Bones, we have seats, but we'll be standing up the whole time. It's a concert, and these guys are gonna rock our asses off. You'll be rockin' out so hard, you won't want to sit down." Then he remembered she was pregnant—how could he forget? "But of course, if you get tired, you can sit down. That's the benefit of having seats. Anyway, I took the Advil so my feet might not be so sore by the end of the night. 'Cause I sure as hell am probably going to be on my feet from the moment those guys take stage until the last song of the last encore."

"Okay," she said. She loved how excited he was. She looked forward to watching him at the show.

"Hey, Bones?"

"Yes, Booth?"

He turned to her with a smile on his face and laughter in his dark, deep-set almond eyes.

"Are you ready to rock?"

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><p><em>To be continued<em>

* * *

><p><em>Like it? Leave a review. <em>

_Hate it? Leave a review.(You get the idea.)  
>I live for reviews.<br>They keep me writing.  
>Thanks for reading!<em>


	4. It Happened on the Way to the O2

**A/N:** Bones _ain't mine, alas. I own no rights to the _Bones _characters. All rights reserved to the copyright holders. (Blah blah...) Thanks for reading!_

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><p>Booth turned to look at his partner, who was walking two paces behind him as they made along Woolwich Road on their way towards the O2 Arena. "Are you okay to walk, Bones?"<p>

"I'm fine, Booth," Brennan replied. "But you're walking very fast. Please slow down a little. I can't walk quite as fast as I used to, though, with my pelvic structure changing because of the pregnancy. The band isn't going to take the stage any faster, no matter how quickly you walk."

Booth laughed. "I guess I'm just really excited, you know." He slowed his pace, though, allowing Brennan to catch up. "I feel like a kid at Christmas," he said, putting his arm around her and kissing her temple softly. _Oh my God, I love touching her. When we get back to the hotel after the show, I'm going to—_

"We're going to be very early," she pointed out, glancing at her watch.

"There's a great old pub right down the street from the arena," he explained. "I was thinking we could have a couple drinks, hang out with some of the other fans—you know, before heading on in." He paused, then shook his head with a sheepish grin. "Um, I mean, _I _could have a couple of drinks. Maybe you could have a couple of sparkling waters—maybe? Would that be okay?"

"Let's have one drink and then play it in our ears," she said. Booth smiled.

"Play it by ear, you mean?" He adored how she messed up common figures of speech. He found it amusing, and tremendously endearing.

"Of course," she replied with a vague smile. "We'll play it by ear."

When they arrived at the pub, the Pilot Inn, Booth held the door open for her. Three hours before showtime, and the place was packed full of people, most of them clad in blue jeans and black Iron Maiden t-shirts. About two-thirds of them were men, but many of them were women, ranging in age from late teens to mid-forties. Brennan narrowed her eyes and made a mental note of that fact. Booth stepped forward to the bar to order. "A Guinness and a sparkling water, please." He turned and smiled at Brennan. She looked so gorgeous, beaming as she did with the unmistakeable glow of pregnancy. Booth had always thought that pregnant women exhuded a beauty all their own, but never imagined he'd see a pregnant woman as absolutely breathtaking as the one next to him who was carrying his child—_their _child. He snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her close, his hand resting on top of her navel. He imagined the tiny life growing underneath his hand and he felt his whole being filled with warmth and joy.

The bartender passed the two drinks to Booth, who paid with a five-pound note. The bartender gave him his change and glanced over to Brennan, smiling as he observed Booth's hand resting over her slightly swollen belly. He loved to savor these little nuggets of life—seeing a stunningly beautiful woman and burly, good-looking American chap, clearly in love and having a baby—and grinned with satisfaction at this, the most enjoyable part of his job: the people-watching.

"I'm glad they banned indoor smoking in English pubs back in 2007," Brennan said, accepting the glass of sparkling water with a lime garnish. "I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be if this place were as smoky as I remember London pubs being back when I first traveled to the UK ten years ago."

"That makes two of us," Booth said. "Or, rather, three of us," he added with a wink, rubbing her abdomen affectionately before grabbing his Guinness from the bar and bringing it to his lips.

"You two here for the show?" a young man asked Brennan. He was slender, with dark brown hair and pale blue eyes, and Brennan found it hard to gauge his age on account of the skinny jeans and long-sleeve black Iron Maiden T-shirt he was wearing. It was like a uniform, almost. _I'm glad Booth doesn't wear skinny jeans, _she mused to herself_. They are decidedly un-masculine._

"Yes, of course," she replied.

"You two from the States?" the young man asked, glancing at Booth with some hesitation. There was something distinctly intimidating about the tall, well-built American with the bulging biceps and dark, deep-set eyes.

"Yep," Booth said, wiping the foam from his upper lip with his fingertips. "What about you?" Brennan looked at him strangely, but said nothing. He knew she found these types of social situations very uncomfortable.

"Sussex," he replied. "I was here for last night's show, too. And saw them last week in Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham. Fucking awesome, mate." Booth took another sip of his Guinness and nodded enthusiastically.

"I'm totally jealous, man," he said. "I missed 'em when they passed through the States in the spring on the 'Round the World in 66 Days' bit of the tour. I wasn't able to make it to either of the Florida shows, which were supposed to be awesome, from what I heard."

"Yeah, that's what I'd heard, too," the young man said. "A friend of mine did the fan club trip to Florida, caught both the Fort Lauderdale and Tampa shows, and he said they rocked. Great crowd energy, and the band was on fire."

Brennan raised her eyebrows. _The band was on fire? Oh, metaphorically speaking. _She shook her head, unable to understand why someone would want to see the same musicians play the same songs multiple times in the same week. It seemed so—repetitive. She resolved to ask Booth about that later.

"So, where in the States are you guys from?"

"Washington D.C.," Brennan replied, sipping her sparkling water gingerly, her other hand resting on Booth's, which rested on her hip.

"Yep," Booth said. "So, what's your name, kid?" _Kid? He sure looks like a kid. He's like Sweets—he might be thirty, but he looks no more than fifteen, like he just started shaving last week._

The young man reached out to shake Booth's hand. "Jamey Clark," he said. Booth accepted the handshake, taking care not to crush the kid's frail-looking fingers in the process. _Definitely the epitome of the pasty Brit, _he thought. A dark feeling passed through Booth when he thought of Vincent, and how much the slight young man in front of him reminded him of the similarly slight intern whose loss they still felt every day.

"I'm Booth, and this is my partner Bren." Brennan smiled slightly at the introduction. They had agreed ahead of time to keep a low profile at the concert. Nicknames only, vague descriptions of occupations, and so forth—the last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself. She wanted this night to be all about Booth, not about her or her international fame as an author.

"It's a pleasure meeting you," Jamey said, taking a sip of what Booth guessed by the color and degree of head was a Newcastle Brown Ale. He blinked, then turned his head. Taking another sip of his beer, he looked up and saw an acquaintance on the other side of the bar. "Please pardon me," he said apologetically. "It was great meeting you two. Enjoy the show!"

Booth raised his hand and gave him the trademarked Iron Maiden hand sign. "Up the Irons!" he said, his voice somewhere between a cheer and a growl.

Jamey Clark smiled and returned the gesture. "Up the Irons, mate! Cheers." They watched him walk away into the crowd of young Maiden fans on the other end of the brass-railed bar.

"Wow, he seemed really young," Brennan observed. "I didn't realize—"

"What?" Booth said with a laugh. "That all the fans aren't old guys like me?"

She slapped his arm playfully. "You' re hardly old, Booth. I just meant, well—I had assumed most of the fans would be in their thirties or forties, since Iron Maiden started becoming popular in the early eighties."

"Remember what I told you?" She looked at him quizzically. "I told you that you'd be surprised."

She raised her chin in a silent _ahh_. "Anthropologically speaking, right?" They both started laughing.

They mingled their way through the crowd of reveling Maiden fans as Booth drained his Guinness. He felt a bit guilty drinking, since his longtime drinking partner had to stand there, drinking sparkling water while he enjoyed a pint of rich, fresh Guinness. Brennan hung back as Booth chatted up other fans at the bar. She watched him work his effortless social magic with complete strangers, discussing not only the obvious common interest in Iron Maiden and heavy metal music, but other things, too—

Brennan's phone beeped quietly in her purse.

"Booth?"

Booth tilted his head back and drained the last of his Guinness. "What?" He asked, his voice tight with worry. "Is everything okay? Are you—?"

She closed her eyes. "Yes, I just need to take a step outside," she explained. She walked outside, stopping to drop a two pound coin on the bar. Booth saw her leave the gratuity and smirked, knowing she had no intention of coming back into the pub. He glanced at his watch and squinted in puzzlement. There was plenty of time—almost two hours yet—before the opening act would take the stage at half past six. Why was she in such a hurry to leave the pub? Perhaps she was not feeling well. _That can't be it—she hasn't had any major bouts of morning sickness in a couple of weeks, and besides, it's four-thirty in the afternoon. _Maybe she was bored; she had been awfully quiet in there. _I figured it was just her lack of comfort in social situations, you know—strange pub, surrounded by complete strangers, all of whom are there to enjoy the atmosphere before going and seeing a band that she's never really been that into and that she's never seen live. _Maybe she doesn't want to go to the concert after all—

"Bones, what's going on?" he asked, his voice cracked with tension. "Are you okay?" He put his arm around her. "I mean, if you're not—"

"Booth, I forgot to give you something earlier," she said with a short, breathy laugh. He looked at her with narrowed eyes, confused.

"What?" She reached into her purse and removed a small envelope. She handed it to him. Booth looked down at the envelope and then into her eyes. _What? _

"Open it," she said.

He tore open the envelope and pulled out two laminated cards on lanyards. Several moments passed as he stared at them, wide-eyed with surprise. His prominent Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard and his mouth gaped open. He was too stunned to speak.

"They're backstage passes, Booth." He looked up, his eyes watery and his face fractured with a smile wider than one she'd ever seen—well, except for the smile that he smiled the night that Angela's baby was born, when she told him she was pregnant with his child.

"Wow, Bones," was all he could say.

She said nothing, but just smiled at him.

"Wow," he said again, his voice betraying his racing heartbeat. "Are you serious? I mean, wow—this is incredible." He held the passes in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the laminated surface as if unsure if it was actually real. "I—wow, I mean—this is the most," he stammered. "Wow." He looked at her, standing there watching him, and he felt his heart surging. He leaned forward and kissed her, covering her mouth with his own as he cupped his hand around her jaw. She relaxed into his embrace, opening her mouth as his tongue brushed across her lower lip and met her own tongue. A wave of desire passed through her as she returned his kiss with a hungry, grasping one of her own.

"Wow," he said, this time referring, at least in part, to something other than the laminated passes in his hand.

~.~.~

"How did you get these?" he asked, his voice giddy with anticipation as they were led through the underground corridor to the backstage area outside of the dressing rooms and band rehearsal rooms. She flashed her eyebrows and smiled slyly.

"I asked my publisher to make a few calls, and _voil__à__!_"

"This is so fucking awesome, I can't stand it!"

The O2 attendant led them around a corner and pointed them to a crowd gathered at the end of the hall. "Dr. Brennan and Mr. Booth, here you are," he said with an open-mouthed smile. "Enjoy the show."

Booth's face lit up. "Oh my God, Bones—there they are." Brennan looked through the crowd of people and saw two or three individuals who were clearly the focus of the gathering. "Wow, that's Bruce Dickinson! Oh my God—I can't believe this." Booth's arm snaked around her waist, the way she loved so much, and he gently led her through the crowd of people gathered there. His heart was pounding in his ears and he felt lightheaded. _I can't believe this is happening. _She leaned to her left and kissed him on the neck, just below his earlobe.

"I'm glad you aren't upset we left the pub early," she said with a light twist of snark in her voice. Booth laughed.

"Are you kidding? This is the best present ever." He looked over at her, then after a moment added, "Well, except for this one—" He rubbed his thumb against her swollen belly. "_This _one is definitely the best," he said with a smile that was so genuine and so filled with love, she felt that her heart would burst. "But this—" He pointed to the band members standing nearby, talking to fans and signing autographs. "This is pretty awesome, too."

"I'm glad, Booth." She wanted to kiss him again, but knew this wasn't the time or the place.

"Come on, Bones—let's go meet the band."

* * *

><p><em>To be continued<em>


	5. Almost Showtime

**A/N:** Bones _ain't mine, alas. I own no rights to the _Bones _characters or to the song lyrics quoted herein. All rights reserved to the copyright holders. (Blah blah...) Thanks for reading! (Concert set list accurately reflects that of Maiden's TFF 2011 world tour.__)_

* * *

><p>Booth was ecstatic. "I don't think I'd ever have imagined I'd ever hear Bruce Dickinson say, 'It's a pleasure to meet you Special Agent Booth.' I mean—wow! Bruce fucking Dickinson! Saying <em>my <em>name. Wow."

Brennan laughed, both at the pleasure in her partner's voice, and at his unfettered use of the word "fuck" and all of its various conjugations (particularly the gerund). She was glad that she'd thought to call her publisher for assistance getting backstage passes to the show, and that they'd been able to come through for her on relatively short notice. Brennan could hardly believe how friendly the members of the band were to Booth, especially the lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, who seemed genuinely interested in meeting the Special Agent in Charge of the Homicide Division of the FBI's D.C. office. Though she'd never told Booth she had done so—because he might have thought it a bit strange—she'd researched the band, and Dickinson specificially, who she knew to be Booth's favorite member of the band, and she found him to be a fascinating figure, a true polymath in every sense of the word.

"What's a polymath?" Booth asked. "Sounds like something I was really shitty at in high school algebra. Probably the same reason I flagged trigonometry."

"A polymath is a person who excels in a number of divergent areas of expertise," she explained.

Booth nodded in understanding. "Oh yeah, that's Bruce Dickinson. The guy's amazing: probably the most singularly talented singer in all of heavy metal music, an experienced commercial airline pilot who's the VP of marketing for a charter airline company, a published author, TV presenter, radio host, film producer, and—" He shook his head and shrugged. "I mean, shit, I'd be psyched to be really good at just _one_ thing."

"Booth, you are really good at one thing," she said. Then she realized how insulting that sounded. "That came out wrong. I mean, you're actually really good at a number of things."

He nudged her playfully with his elbow. "What else am I good at, other than catching bad guys?" He winked at her, then leaned over in his seat and kissed her cheek.

"Well," she began, her lips breaking into a smile. "You _are _one of the most accomplished snipers the U.S. Army has ever produced." _Hmm, what else? _"You're an amazing father to an incredible little boy." _Uh oh. That's true, but seems kind of—well, generic. What else? _"You're a really good bowler." She laughed. _Because that's really important in the big scheme of things. _"You're really good at throwing knives."

"Aw—come on, Bones, you're killing me. That's it?" He smiled his trademark Boothy grin, the one that she loved so much, the one that had illuminated the darkest corners of her life for the last seven years, despite all of her attempts to keep the shades drawn. _Metaphorically speaking, of course. _

"You have incredibly potent sperm," she whispered with a giggle. "I've been able to validate that on the basis of my own direct experience."

Booth shrugged, laughing. "That's true on both counts."

"And—" Her voice dropped an octave as she leaned in close to him, her lips brushing against his earlobe. "You are a breathtakingly talented lover. The best I've ever had, without question." She snickered as she stroked the tip of her nose against the helix of his outer ear. A shudder passed through him as she touched that particular part of his ear, one of the spots that only she knew about.

"Hmmm—" was all he said before he turned his head and kissed her deeply. "Because that's an accomplishment I'll take credit for, and an area of expertise that I'll gladly continue to keep working on." He kissed her again, lingering to suck her lower lip as he broke off the kiss. "Maybe we can get in some practice tonight," he suggested with a raised eyebrow. "Unless you think I'm sufficiently expert that I don't need any more practice in that area."

She kissed him back, chasing his tongue with her own before she started to laugh into his open mouth. "No, I think there's always room for more practice, even for highly skilled practitioners such as yourself."

"Mmmm, really?" He looked deep into her eyes, their foreheads together as he caressed her jaw with the back of his hand. "Practice makes perfect?"

"There's no such thing as perfect," she said, purring softly in response to his caress.

"Then I guess I'll have to keep trying," he replied.

"I guess so," she said, kissing him again before he pulled away. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

Booth shook his head. "No, no. Listen to this song, Bones."

She sat back in her seat and focused on the song that was playing on the arena's PA. She had been ignoring the background music for the last few minutes—understandably so—but had noted that the playlist seemed to focus on hard rock tunes from the early eighties until the late nineties.

Booth pointed to the roof, where he imagined the PA was located. "Bones, if 'Hot Blooded' weren't our song, _this _would be our song. Listen—"

_Wound up, can't sleep, can't do anything right, little honey,  
>Oh, since I set my eyes on you.<br>I tell you the truth.  
>Twistin' like a flame in a slow dance, baby,<br>You're driving me crazy.  
>Come on, little honey, come on now!<em>

_Fire! Smoke, she is a rising!  
>Fire! Smoke on the horizon!<br>Fire! Smoke, she is a rising!  
>Fire! Smoke stack lightning!<em>

"What—is this a song about me?" she asked with a sly grin, leaning in close to him again. Booth chuckled.

"It was about you until about four months ago," he said with a smirk, glancing down at her belly. His voice dropped to a low whisper. "I spent seven years dreaming of you, trying to find a way to get you back into my arms. This song totally sums up the way I felt for all those years. You _seared _me, and I smoldered for you for seven years. Nothing I did—not even my attempts to douse the flames with the affections of other women—could put out the fire that burned for you in _here_." He placed her hand over his heart. "You _are _my fire woman. You always have been." He smiled sweetly, enjoying the warmth of her hand over his heart before bringing her hand to rest on her swollen abdomen. "You make me so happy, Bones. I can't even begin to tell you."

"I love you, Booth."

"I love you, too, Bones." He kissed her softly on the lips and smiled. "Did I tell you how _awesome _these seats are? Just far enough back on the side, close enough to the center to not have the view of the side of the stage obstructed by the riser—just perfect." She smiled proudly. "And we actually have seats, which is great for both of us."

"How are your feet, Booth?" she asked.

"They're fine, Bones." He squeezed her thigh, acknowledging her concern. "Thanks for asking." Suddenly, he looked up, his eyes darting from left to right, and a smile spread across his face. "Ooooh. Oooh, ooh!" He sounded like a little boy.

"What?" she asked. Then she heard it, too. "Ohh, right—I remember."

_Doctor doctor, please_  
><em>Oh, the mess I'm in<em>  
><em>Doctor doctor, please oh, the mess I'm in<em>  
><em>She walked up to me and really stole my heart<em>  
><em>And then she started to take my body apart<em>

_Livin' lovin' I'm on the run_  
><em>So far away from you<em>  
><em>Livin' lovin' I'm on the run<em>  
><em>So far away from you<em>  
><em>Doctor doctor, please<em>

_Oh I'm goin' fast_  
><em>Doctor doctor, please, oh, I'm goin' fast<em>  
><em>It's only just a moment<em>  
><em>She's turning paranoid<em>  
><em>That's not a situation for a nervous boy<em>

He raised an eyebrow. "You know what that means—right, Bones?"

She nodded. "It's showtime!"

* * *

><p><em>Like it? Leave a review. Hate it? Leave a review. Reviews keep me writing. Thanks :-)<em>


	6. The Show

_**A/N: **__I don't own _Bones_ or the song lyrics quoted herein, all of which belong to the respective copyright-holders. _

_This chapter is the one you've all been waiting for ;-) Booth's beloved Iron Maiden takes the stage and Brennan gets to see her first genuine heavy metal show. _

_Editorial note: I'll take credit for The Cult song 'Fire Woman' in the last chapter, but the UFO song is in fact the song that Iron Maiden uses at every show to signal to the audience that the performance is about to start. (So I can't claim genius in dropping that one in there, even if the lyrics __**are**__ über-relevant to B&B's relationship.) The set list and general concert details are true to life, based on my own personal experience at Maiden's indescribably awesome show in Tampa, Florida on April 17th, 2011. _

_Up the Irons, all my rockin' B&B buddies and Boneos extraordinaire! Enjoy!_

* * *

><p>The last refrain of UFO's <em>"<em>Doctor, Doctor" faded and for the briefest of moments, the arena was largely silent.

Then the murmuring of the crowd swelled into a crescendo of hoots, cheers and whistles as 20,000 fans watched the large video screens expectantly. Another twenty or thirty seconds passed as Brennan watched and listened to the undulating sound of the crowd's collective excitement. She watched Booth out of the corner of her eye and saw the same anticipation in the slackness of his jaw, his gaping smile and soft-eyed look of wonder that, in that moment she found irresistibly endearing. He curled his arm around her waist, his big veiny hand coming to rest on the soft swell of her belly, and he nuzzled her shoulder, poking her cheek with his crisply spiked brown hair.

"Thank you," he said with a toothy grin. He seemed to her even happier and more excited about what was coming than he had been waiting for the officials to drop the puck at the beginning of Flyers/Capitals game they'd attended a fee months earlier.

She smiled and whispered, "You're welcome," her response all but inaudible, drowned out by the surging roar of the crowd. He nodded, smiling sweetly, then his eyes and grin widened as the enormous video screens came to life and the air was filled with the sound of a highly distorted guitars swirling, twisting around one another and a heady, atmospheric, multilayered drum solo. The screens displayed the image of stars streaming by, clearly intended to simulate the view from the cockpit of a rapidly-moving spacecraft. It reminded Brennan of driving head-on into a blizzard, then she smiled, remembering how Washington's late spring blizzard had forced her and Booth to spend nearly a day trapped in the horrible old elevator in his apartment building, and how the conversations they'd had that day, and that night, had cleared the air between them, setting the stage for the wonderful shift in their relationship that—

"Here we go, Bones," he said to her, pointing to the video screen, shifting his weight from one foot to the other again, flexing and unflexing his free hand in anticipation. The lead singer's face appeared in the foreground, set against the backdrop of streaming stars and he began to speak, his tenor voice distant, empty and haunting. She felt Booth's arm leave her and saw him raise both of his arms high in the air, each hand held in a 'devil's horn' gesture. "Waaaaahooooo-o-o-o" he cried at the top of lungs, joining twenty thousand others in expressing his excitement, reverence and—well, something else that Brennan couldn't quite put her finger on—with complete abandon.

_I try to call the Earth's command_  
><em>Desperation in my voice<em>  
><em>I'm drifting way off course now<em>  
><em>With very little choice<em>  
><em>The loneliness is hard to bear<em>  
><em>I try to calm my fear...<em>

The stage remained dark as the crowd focused their attention on the video screens, even though there was enough light that Brennan could see the band members were getting into their positions. Even at a distance, she recognized the four band members they met earlier backstage—the singer Bruce Dickinson, bassist and founder Steve Harris, and two of the guitarists, Dave Murray and Janick Gers—and smiled at how ecstatic Booth had been to meet his longtime musical idols.

The intro faded and, after a few measures of silence—well, except for the insuppressible crowd noise—the stage was bathed in a soft aqua light and the band burst into their first live song performance of the evening. The singer launched into the air, leaping several feet over the monitors as he launched into the first verse.

_I'm stranded in space_  
><em>I'm lost without trace<em>  
><em>I haven't a chance of getting away...<em>

_If I could survive_  
><em>To live one more time<em>  
><em>I wouldn't be changing a thing at all...<em>

_Do more in my life_  
><em>Than some do in ten<em>  
><em>I'd go back and do it all over again...<em>

_For I have lived my life to the full_  
><em>I have no regrets<em>  
><em>But I wish I could talk to my family<em>  
><em>To tell them that one last goodbye...<em>

Brennan turned to Booth and saw him throw his head back as the singer pointed the microphone at the crowd, inviting twenty thousand voices to join him in singing the chorus.

_The final frontier_  
><em>The final frontier<em>  
><em>The final frontier...<em>

Booth pumped his fist in the air and shouted another unrestrained "waaaaahooooo" before bending his head slightly and banging his head with the rhythm as the second verse began. Brennan pursed her lips as she watched him dance—and, in her mind, there was no question that his movements qualified as dancing, in the anthropological sense. She looked around and saw others dancing similarly, especially men but also a good proportion of the women. The movements had an especially dramatic impact where the dancers had long hair, creating a flailing or pinwheel effect. _So this is "headbanging"—_

She glanced back to Booth and was relieved to see that his head movements were not as violent as the headbanging she saw some of the other male fans engaged in. She knew that such movement, if done too violently or for too long, could cause a repetitive head trauma. Booth's headbanging seemed more like aggressive head nodding, and she observed more movement in the rest of his body—particularly his shoulders and arms—than in his head and neck. The muscles of his neck, shoulders, arms and chest were taut, and she observed beads of sweat running down his temple and down his neck. She felt twinge, a tingle at the base of her spine that propagated to her now-dampening core and she smiled, amused that she found all of this so incredibly arousing. It wasn't just the physical spectacle of headbanging and the constellation of muscle movements necessary to do it, but also that his movements, his posture, his singing and every thread of his attention were focused with such total abandon on experiencing the music with his whole being in the present moment.

It wasn't until she felt Booth's lips plant a wet kiss on her neck that she realized she had been lost in her own thoughts.

"You having fun?" he asked, his mouth close to her ear. The crowd roared as the opening bars of another song—the third one in the set, apparently—growled through the amplifiers, leading the crowd to cheer even louder. "Ah," he said, pointing at the stage as the crowd quieted down somewhat. "This is an oldie but goodie from the _Powerslave_ album—"

_Kill for gain or shoot to maim_  
><em>But we don't need a reason<em>  
><em>The golden goose is on the loose<em>  
><em>And never out of season...<em>

_Some blackened pride still burns inside_  
><em>This shell of bloody treason<em>  
><em>Here's my gun for a barrel of fun<em>  
><em>For the love of living death...<em>

Had she not heard Booth play and sing along with the song before, she might never have imagined he would enjoy a song with lyrics like these, not after all of the trauma he suffered as an Army sniper. But, as Booth had explained the night he played the Powerslave albumfor her, the song was not a war-mongering anthem, but rather a critique of the various powerful interests that profit from war-making and an acknowledgement of the incredible suffering wrought by war-making.

So she wasn't shocked when Booth, along with 20,000 others, rose to join Bruce Dickinson in singing the chorus:

_The killer's breed or the demon's seed,_  
><em>The glamour, the fortune, the pain,<em>  
><em>Go to war again, blood is freedom's stain,<em>  
><em>But don't you pray for my soul anymore...<em>

_2 minutes to midnight_  
><em>The hands that threaten doom.<em>  
><em>2 minutes to midnight<em>  
><em>To kill the unborn in the womb...<em>

A deep, disembodied voice broke the relative silence after the conclusion of "Coming Home," and the audience was temporarily hushed.

_There are more things in Heaven and Earth_  
><em>Than are dreamt of in your philosophy...<em>

Booth pulled her close and kissed her, and she felt his lips curved into a smile as he did so. He'd used that line—or a close approximation thereof—with her years ago. Over the years, and especially over the last two or three years, since her relationships with Max Keenan, her brother Russ—and most importantly, Booth—had helped her break down the wall of imperviousness that she'd built to protect herself from risking hurt and loss, she had come to realize that there were indeed things that were real that could not be touched, analyzed, proved or disproved. They just were. The foremost of these was love. And while she could not prove it with an x-ray, mass spectrometry or any other scientific method of measurement, she knew loved Booth, and that he loved her.

She kissed him back, fighting the overwhelming desire to run her hands up the front of his shirt, letting the suction of her kiss linger on his lower lip before she pulled away, allowing him to enjoy the opening measures of the next song. The arena filled with the the twittering sounds of insects, birds and night, a recording meant to evoke the sensations of walking through a wetlands at night. Then one of the guitarists, Gers, began to play a delicate melody on an acoustic guitar. The bassist, Harris, and Dickinson raised their arms and began to clap, leading the crowd to lay down the rhythm with their hands. Brennan stood there, clapping and in awe. It was truly something to see twenty thousand people clapping in unison, holding down the rhythm of the song without any bass or drums.

Booth glanced over to Brennan and couldn't help but grin at seeing her swept up in the music. She loved this song, "Dance of Death," more than any of the others that Booth had played for her. He loved that she'd found something to love in this music, and that she was able to connect with the experience that night. _Good for you, Bones._ It was, he acknowledged with a private smirk, almost too perfect that his murder-investigating, crime novel writing, forensic anthropologist girlfriend loved "Dance of Death" more than any of the other songs in the Maiden canon. But it was also, without a doubt, _way fucking cool._

Both of them looked up to the video screens as Dickinson's dense tenor, inhabiting the lower parts of his vocal register, then overtook both the swamp sounds and the guitar and filled the arena with its richness.

_Let me tell you a story to chill the bones_  
><em>About a thing that I saw<em>  
><em>One night wandering in the Everglades<em>  
><em>I'd one drink but no more...<em>

The reference made Brennan think about the case they'd had involving the body found in Everglades National Park. A horrible case, but one they'd ultimately solved. _Our role, in the Dance of Death, is to make sure the untimely dead are known, given names and faces, and that their killers see justice._ Though she hated murder, she loved that her work with Booth and the squints gave her a chance to do some good in the world.

_I was rambling, enjoying the bright moonlight_  
><em>Gazing up at the stars<em>  
><em>Not aware of a presence so near to me<em>  
><em>Watching my every move...<em>

_Feeling scared and I fell to my knees_  
><em>As something rushed me from the trees<em>  
><em>Took me to an unholy place<em>  
><em>And that is where I fell from grace...<em>

Dickinson's voice was slow and measured, dripping with drama and feeling, and wonderfully deep. Brennan loved the way his voice sounded at this point of the song—rich and low, almost baritone-like.

_Then they summoned me over to join in with them_  
><em>To the dance of the dead<em>  
><em>Into the circle of fire I followed them<em>  
><em>Into the middle I was led...<em>

Brennan thought of medieval manuscript illustrations of the _danse macabre_, most of them dating to the mid-14th century Black Death. The song, while set in modern times, did a good job evoking the image of the _danse macabre_.

_As if time had stopped still I was numb with fear_  
><em>But still I wanted to go<em>  
><em>And the blaze of the fire did no hurt upon me<em>  
><em>As I walked onto the coals...<em>

Looking over at Booth, his face drenched with sweat but glowing with enthusiasm, and Brennan thought of how he would walk over hot coals for her and their unborn child. A wave of warmth passed through her, and for a moment all she could think of was how much she loved him.

_And I felt I was in a trance_  
><em>And my spirit was lifted from me<em>  
><em>And if only someone had the chance<em>  
><em>To witness what happened to me..<em>.

Brennan glanced over to her partner and wrapped her arm around his waist as she lifted her head to sing.

_And I danced and I pranced and I sang with them_  
><em>All had death in their eyes<em>  
><em>Lifeless figures they were undead all of them<em>  
><em>They had ascended from hell<em>

She ran her hands through the damp hair on the back of Booth's neck as he bent his head down to kiss her forehead. His lips mouthed the words "thank you." Brennan smiled and mouthed back the three words Booth loved most.

"I love you."

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	7. PostShow PostMortem

_**A/N:**__ Bones ain't mine. __Here's the penultimate chapter of B&B's metal concert odyssey. It's time for Bones to share her squinty observations about the show. It's a bit of a short dose of B&B this time, but I promise lots of good stuff for the last one. Patience, my sweets :-)_

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><p>"So what'd you think?" Booth asked as he and Brennan finally exited to the street. "You know, your first metal show and all..." He walked a couple of steps behind her, admiring the view with a sheepish grin that she could not see.<p>

Brennan released her ponytail and tousled her hair, trying to expose her sweaty scalp to the evening breeze.

"I really enjoyed myself," she said. "It was very interesting, and you seemed to have a lot of fun." The back of her knit blouse was damp with sweat, and she could feel two droplets of perspiration between her breasts. The breeze and the cool evening air were welcome and refreshing against her skin.

"I did," he said, lengthening his strides to catch up with her as he reached over her shoulder to kiss her earlobe. She giggled.

"There's something very tribal about the whole thing," she observed. "There are cultural norms—you know, group practices, rituals, a common vocabulary, symbols and stories known and shared only by the group, and which identify individuals as members of the group."

His lips curved into a close-mouthed smile. "I'm not sure what you mean, Dr. Brennan," he said sterilely. "Please expain…"

She shrugged and smiled.

"Well, for starters—there's a uniform code of dress: jeans and a band T-shirt, preferably black." Booth brushed the front of his own, sweat-damp shirt with the side of his hand. "Yes," she acknowledged with a short laugh as she continued cataloguing the specialized vocabulary, rituals and other markers of headbanger group affiliation.

"Yeah, yeah," Booth said, nodding his head in agreement at her observations—at least, insofar as he understood what she was talking about. "But what I really want to know is, did you _like_ it? What did you _love_ about the experience?" He paused. "Other than your date," he added with a smirk.

She raised an eyebrow and returned the smirk. Then the smirk fled her face, and she narrowed her eyes as she thought back to the show.

"I loved how, during certain songs, the entire crowd would sing along with the instrumentalists—no words, just _wooohs_ and _whooooahs_ and _aaaahs_ sung in perfect harmony by twenty thousand people who had the song's melody perfectly devoted to memory. It was like a liturgy, almost, known by heart by all the congregants."

He considered objecting to the religious analogy, just thought better of it and made no comment.

"_Mmm-hmm_?" was all he said.

"Most of the audience knew all the words to all the songs—singing or at least mouthing them along with the singer as he sang. But all the while not disturbing or overwhelming the performance. Quite impressive the way each person seemed to—well, modulate—the intensity of their own singing to retain the primacy of the band's performance.."

Booth cocked his head to one side, unsure as to what she meant by that remark.

"And the crowd seemed to know exactly what parts of the songs would require their participation—you know, not just the choruses, but precisely which choruses, and which verses."

"There was a tremendous and amazing exchange of energy between the crowd and the performers, as if each were feeding off the other's enthusiasm. Frankly, I've never seen anything like it in all my years of study…"

"All together—the singing, the _woooo_ing and _aaaah_ing, the headbanging and all of it—it was like watching twenty thousand people at a religious revival or something of that type, all of them abandoning themselves so fully to the experience of the moment that they each almost seemed to disappear into the music. They were no longer individuals, but all perfectly synchronized parts of a single, sonorous organism. It was an amazing spectacle."

Booth smiled wide. _She got it._

"I'm glad you liked it," he said with a smile. "And here we are—our hotel." He licked his lips. "I'm thinking we can continue this upstairs—maybe lose ourselves in some kind of perfectly synchronized activity, abandon ourselves fully to the experience of the moment that—"

"Shut up, Booth," Brennan said with a coarse laugh. "Let's go upstairs. We have some unfinished business to attend to…"

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	8. After the Show

_**A/N: **_Bones _ain't mine. All that amazing post-concert energy has to go somewhere. Thanks for reading.._

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><p>Booth felt her hands on his bony hips, squeezing with her fingertips, as he tried to focus his mind on the simple task of inserting the keycard into the slot and removing it again. Her touch proved a tremendous distraction and it took several tries before the mechanism's green indicator light lit up and the lock clicked open. As soon as the lock clicked and Booth turned the handle to open the door, Brennan pushed him through the door and he nearly lost his balance. He caught himself, turned around and shoved the door shut firmly with his foot as she lunged toward him.<p>

She touched the back of his head with her hand, her fingers light against the soft hair at the nape of his neck. "I've been so horny," she said, "all night." Her husky whisper disappeared into his hungry kiss as he slid his tongue across her lip and into her open mouth. She felt her entire body flash with heat and pulse with want at his embrace.

She had watched him all night, pumping his fists in the air and banging his head to the music, beads of sweat streaming down his face and running down his arms. For hours, she had been drinking up a shamelessly intoxicating display of his raw virility, and she felt powerless to resist him.

"_Go Booth!" Amid the clacking sound of hockey sticks and the hissing sound of sharpened skates on ice, she heard his voice calling out to Wendell to move the puck down the ice. "Come on, Booth!" His strong, broad-shouldered frame loomed large on the ice, framed nicely in his light blue "Federals" uniform. No sooner had he passed her when he twirled around, skated a a half-dozen long strides towards the opposing player and collided angrily with him against the glass right in front of her. The power, aggression and unrestrained masculinity in his style of play left her breathless and damp with want. _

"I've wanted this so bad, all night," she panted.

"So have I," he said, kissing her with abandon. He moaned and pulled her closer to him, his hand grabbing her ass and grinding his hip against her belly as he felt her protruding navel. "I want to fuck you so bad, Bones," he grunted, pulling away slightly as he peeled his T-shirt off. Bare from the waist up, he yanked her close again as he held her head between his hands. Her pale green-grey eyes flashed, then darkened before him as he leaned in to kiss her once more.

Moments passed—how many, neither of them knew—before they realized that he had pinned her against the wall next to the door. As soon as he realized it, he knew he needed to snap out of it, at least long enough not to take her, his pregnant lover, against a wall.

She remembered one of the songs that had played in the arena before the band took the stage:

_Take me now, baby, here as I am  
>Pull me close, try and understand<br>Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe  
>Love is a banquet on which we feed<br>_

She wanted him so intensely her head was spinning. _Take me now, Booth. _His head was spinning, too, but somehow a tiny trickle of rational thought percolated through his lust-clogged mind.

"_Bed_," he murmured, between hard, wet, recursive kisses.

She replied with a _mmmhnnngh_ sound and a gentle push of her hand against his hard, bare chest, and he backed away, allowing her to escape his embrace. She moved towards the bed and began to peel her clothes off, carelessly tossing them to the floor as he tore the comforter from the bed, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on her as she revealed more and more of her milky white skin with each article of clothing she discarded.

"God, you are amazing," he said, caressing her rounded abdomen and ever-plumper breasts with his eyes. He pulled the sheet back—why he did not know, since he knew they would be rolling around on top of the sheets, not under them—as a low growl escaped from his throat. He nearly ripped the top button from his dark, acid-washed Levis as he pulled his jeans and boxers off, stepping out of them, slipping out of his wild-hued socks and climbing onto the bed to join her.

She leaned back against the pillows, her arms and legs spread invitingly before him. He moved between her legs and paused to appreciate the shadow his broad-shouldered frame cast over her pregnant body. He couldn't help but _love _the way it looked. His focus snapped back to the present moment as she arched her back suggestively, her thigh touching his hip and her nipples brushing against his chest. She moaned his name as he bent his head down and took one of her nipples into his mouth.

As he sucked her nipple and felt it harden between his lips, he felt himself harden as he brushed against her child-swollen belly. She was so beautiful—so, so beautiful. He reached one hand down between her legs and touched her wet, slick folds.

"Bones?"

"Now, Booth," she commanded him gently. His mind was spinning with desire and, at hearing those two simple words, he was hopeless to resist. They had the rest of the night to make slow, tender, gentle love. But right now—in this moment—neither of them wanted to wait another second.

He entered her with a single firm stroke. As he watched himself move in and out of her, he found his eyes and heart filled with the sight of her swollen belly beneath him. As real as this was to him, it still amazed him to think that he was hers, she was his, and she was carrying his child. _Their _child.

"I love you, Bones."

She gasped in pleasure and smiled. "I love you, Booth."

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